With the ruling DMK doing a flip-flop and the Opposition AIADMK not taking the bait, the reaction to the Jaffna battle in Tamil Nadu remains muted for
now

ByLakshmi
Iyer in Chennai

In
November 1995, when the Jaffna peninsula slipped out of the control of the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), then an out-of-power Dravida
Munnetra Kazhagham (DMK) leader M. Karunanidhi led a "black
shirt" procession in Chennai. At the end of the month he called a
12-hour bandh that was supported by all political parties, including the
ruling All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagham (AIADMK). The bandh in a
limited way had marked the revival of support for the Sri Lankan Tamil
cause for the first time after Rajiv Gandhi's assassination in Tamil Nadu.

REFUGEE
CAMP: GUMUDIPONDI

HEART
IS WHERE HOMELAND ISAt
Gumudipoondi -- 50 km north of Chennai -- the Sri Lankan Tamil
refugee camp has an air of solemnity and urgency. There is a mass
prayer for Eelam, the Tamil homeland that now seems within the
realms of possibility. And frenzied preparations to house 160 of
the 400 refugees who have just arrived in Mandapam.
The effect of the LTTE's military success across the Palk Straits
is palpable in the camp. For the first time since their arrival in
1998 the refugees freely discuss the LTTE and the emerging Eelam.
"We want to go back. We are soon going to have a
homeland," says Chandra, one of the out-of-work youth huddled
together under a shade. For news of Eelam, Chandra and his friends
rely only on a radio broadcast from London. "We listen to it
twice a day." Eelam, according to him, is already at hand.
"Pirabhakaran is just taking time to announce it."
The mere mention of Eelam invites a litany of complaints. "We
lived with dignity in our country. We have no dignity here. We
cannot even go to Chennai. This place is like a prison," says
a young Tamil. The refugees are expected to be inside the camp by
6 p.m. "We cannot put up posters hailing the LTTE. We cannot
even burst a cracker. We are continuously suspected to be
militants," complains another. Ironically, these youngsters
were packed off to India because their families did not want them
to join the Tigers.
Not everyone in the camp share the disdain of Chandra and his
friends for life in the refugee camp. In fact, people who moved
into the camp a decade ago view it as an opportunity. "The
LTTE won't get a single recruit from here," says former TULF
leader S.C. Chandrahasan -- who now runs the Organisation for
Eelam Refugee Rehabilitation (oferr). "We have made people
aware of the need to educate themselves so that they can help
their homeland when they return."
Nineteen-year-old Jaya bears Chandrahasan out. She has completed
high school and is hoping to join the ranks of 450 students from
the 133 refugee camps spread across Tamil Nadu who are already
receiving higher education under a special quota. She wants to be
an engineer to "rebuild Eelam". "I am studying for
my country," she says. "That will be my contribution to
the cause."
Her family of five lives on a cash dole of Rs 150 per head each
fortnight and subsidised rice at 57 paise a kilo. The subsidies on
the 65,000 Sri Lankan Tamil refugees cost the exchequer Rs 15.5
crore per month.
Jaya has no memory of her home in Jaffna; she has been in India
since she was eight. Yet she is emotionally charged when talking
of Eelam. She believes the LTTE will secure her homeland. So does
her mother Muthulakshmi, who fled Sri Lanka with her four children
in 1990 to avoid being human fodder for the LTTE. "If we had
stayed a little longer, we would have joined the LTTE,"
admits Jaya. But she is in no hurry to return to the island,
confident that Eelam will wait for her.

-Lakshmi Iyer

Curiously, five years later, when the
same LTTE is today poised to regain control of Jaffna, Karunanidhi, now
the chief minister, has not only distanced himself from Eelam, but also
rubbishes the Tigers as the organisation that has killed more Tamils than
served their cause.

True, LTTE supremo Velupillai
Pirabhakaran was never close to Karunanidhi. But after years of trying to
build bridges with the Tigers, the Kalaingar's unwillingness to associate
himself with the outfit that has posted significant military successes has
stumped political circles. Was the Tamil Nadu chief minister reflecting
the mood of the people? Were the Tamils no longer interested in what was
happening to fellow Tamils across the sea?

"We are a party in power, we have to
exercise power, articulate our views carefully," says state Law
Minister Alladi Aruna. Political circles in Chennai, however, linked
Karunanidhi's new stance to a Union Government order on May 12 extending
the ban on the LTTE for a further period of two years.

Extension of the ban was routine. What
was entirely new was the reason cited for such action in the preamble to
the government order. According to the order, the ban on the organisation
was being extended because the concept of Eelam -- a separate homeland for
Tamils -- that it was pursuing could pose a threat to India.

The ban order has unintentionally come to
redefine the parameters of the politics of Dravidian parties in Tamil
Nadu. It has effectively capped competitive mobilisation of public opinion
on Sri Lankan Tamil interests by the two major regional parties -- the DMK
and the AIADMK. "The factional politics of Tamil Nadu had its impact
on the Sri Lankan Tamil groups," says Chennai-based Lanka expert
Professor V. Suryanarayanan. "The LTTE has always exploited the
competition among the Dravidian parties to its advantage."

In the first four days that it came into
existence the ban order had the most debilitating effect on Karunanidhi.
It forced him not once but twice to revise the statement he made on the
floor of the Tamil Nadu Assembly about Eelam and the LTTE. On May 11, he
said the DMK would be happy if the LTTE got Tamil Eelam. The following day
he clarified to the press that his statement in the Assembly did not mean
his Government would demand creation of Eelam. The DMK, he emphasised, had
given up the idea of a Tamil-nation state way back in 1962. The party's
founder and legendary leader C.N. Annadurai had formally renounced
secessionism after the Sino-Indian conflict. On May 15, Karunanidhi went a
step further. In the state Assembly, he rubbished the LTTE for killing
Tamils more than furthering their cause.

The ban had such a salutary effect on the
AIADMK, the main opposition party outside the Assembly, that it refrained
from making an issue of the chief minister's flip-flop. The volte-face was
an embarrassment to the DMK allies like the Pattali Makkal Katchi (PMK)
and the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagham (MDMK), which have been
advocating a proactive Indian role in helping the Lankan Tamils.
"Karunanidhi spoke from his heart when he said he would be happy when
the Tamil Eelam is formed," explains the lone PMK legislator Dhiran.
"That alone is true. Thereafter all that he said was under some
duress."

SRI
LANKA: JAFFNA

THE
DESPERATION IS PALPABLETruth is
usually the first casualty in a war. Especially if the Government
clamps a blanket censorship of news from the war front, as Sri
Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga has done ever since the
LTTE launched a major assault to recapture the Jaffna peninsula
last fortnight. While every day the Tamil Tigers speak of a string
of victories on their websites, the Government spokesperson scoffs
at such claims and instead reels out figures on how the Sri Lankan
armed forces have held their own in the battle for Jaffna.
Yet, as the Tigers continue their relentless attack --
appropriately called Ceaseless Waves -- on key army positions in
Jaffna, the Government's desperation is palpable. Even though the
25,000 soldiers stationed in the North far outnumber the LTTE's
7,000 fighters, the Government is not taking any chances in view
of the low morale of its troops. With India flatly refusing to
either intervene militarily or sell weapons to Lanka, Kumaratunga
hurriedly sent her officers to seven countries to shop for arms.
Israel, after Lanka restored diplomatic relations with it, offered
to sell four Kfir ground attack aircraft, but said they could be
shipped only by the second week of June. With the delay in the
arrival of fighter jets, the Government sent a "crisis
purchase" team to Pakistan and the Czech Republic to acquire
multi-barrel rocket launchers (MBRLs) and 120mm artillery guns.
Meanwhile, with reports of the LTTE having reached the outskirts
of Jaffna town, the Lankan Government appears to have requested
India to at least provide psychological support to its beleaguered
forces. India responded by conducting a naval exercise around the
Tamil Nadu coastline abutting Jaffna. The Lankans then invited
K.P.S. Gill, the former director-general of Punjab Police, to
advise them on combating the LTTE's terrorism. And General Rohan
Daluwatte, the army chief, dashed to Bangalore to reportedly
discuss strategy with Indian Army commanders in the south. The
move was apparently designed to send confusing signals to the
LTTE. But with the Indian Government maintaining that there was no
question of a military intervention, the visit has left everyone
confused, even as the battle for Jaffna enters a decisive stage.

-Roy
Denish in Colombo

Political circles, however, would like to
see a design in Karunanidhi's volte-face. According to them, the DMK
leader's about-turn was a device to isolate both the MDMK and the PMK.
With the Opposition in disarray, Karunanidhi feels he has no need for the
two allies in the Assembly elections due next year. With the AIADMK and
the Tamil Maanila Congress (TMC) unable to reach an agreement on forming a
coalition, the DMK appears poised for a re-election.

The ruling party's indifference to the
Eelam issue has not dampened the enthusiasm of Tamil chauvinist fringe
groups like the Tamizhar Desiya Iyakkam (TDI). The group has been
consistently working towards making the LTTE acceptable to the people of
Tamil Nadu soon after Rajiv's assassination. It managed to build some
public support for the outlawed organisation in its campaign against the
death sentences handed out to the 26 accused in the assassination case. It
plans to consolidate its gains by kindling public interest in the LTTE's
military expeditions.

The public mood in Chennai is understated
but not indifferent to the military gains of the Tigers. As Jayakantan, a
Sri Lankan student residing at the Gumudipoondi refugee camp, puts it:
"My classmates at the arts college have been asking me regularly
about the LTTE's gains in Jaffna. They ask me to sing songs of the
Tigers."

Ever since the Lankan Tamil crisis peaked
in the past one month, Tamil groups like the TDI and the Dravida Kazhagham
(DK) have been trying to organise public meetings and mobilise public
opinion. They called a meeting in Chidambaram last week. It was banned by
the police. "I have moved the court against such bans," says TDI
leader P. Nedumaran.

To an extent, the failure of the main
political parties to articulate support for the LTTE does affect the
efforts of these groups. Dravida Kazhagham's Deputy General Secretary Kali
Pungkundran, uncomfortable with the changing stance of the DMK, says,
"If the LTTE loses, there is no other alternative to provide
leadership to the Tamil cause."

Yet, for Nedumaran it is enough that
there is tremendous public interest in news about military developments in
Lanka. Barring the Brahmin-controlled press, he says, the language press
was faithfully focusing on the events in the island nation. Most
newspapers were relying on newly created Eelam websites to inform their
readers.

Rajya Sabha member Cho Ramaswamy strongly
contests Nedumaran's position. "I challenge (MDMK's) Vaiko and (PMK's)
S. Ramadoss to win an election on the LTTE issue." He recalls how
Karunanidhi resigned from the Assembly in 1983 in protest against the
anti-Tamil riots in Sri Lanka. In terms of electoral support, the most
ardent supporters of the LTTE have never been able to get elected to the
state Assembly. Nedumaran contested the 1989 elections to the state
Assembly on the Tamil Eelam platform, but the electorate decisively
rejected him.

Cho points out that barring the 1991
polls, no other election between 1983 and now have been contested on the
Lanka Tamil issue. "People are not bothered. If they were, do you
think Jayalalitha who is in search of an issue would not rake it up?"
he asks. Cho is supported by the BJP state unit President L. Ganeshan, who
says that only parties with no mass base are supporting the LTTE.
"And that is not a coincidence." As for Karunanidhi's new
position on the LTTE, Ganeshan says, "He (Karunanidhi) has crossed
the threshold of being a leader. He has become a statesman and he is
speaking out of his experience."

All this points to the core question of
whether the muted interest in the Lankan problem reflects a weakening of
the spirit of Tamil sub-nationalism. "Identity formation is not a
static process," explains Suryanarayanan. "It is a dynamic
process of social formation. Linguistic identities came to the fore when
linguistic states were formed. Now the emphasis on the language is not
important." The DMK chief minister himself has now emerged as a
champion of English.

Former AIADMK minister S. Ramachandran
sums up best the impact of the Sri Lankan developments on Tamil Nadu. He
says, "If the LTTE takes Jaffna, the Lankan Tamil issue would not be
a problem. As far as people are concerned it would be a settled affair.
However, if the LTTE is beaten back from Jaffna, suspicion against India
will arise."

For the moment, the projections about the
fallout of the developments in Sri Lanka on Tamil Nadu politics may appear
exaggerated. All the same, the public mood could change from muted
interest to an outcry if thousands of Tamil refugees begin to arrive in
the state.